Pacers-Knicks Preview

By JEFF BARTLPosted Mar 18 2014 4:19PM

The New York Knicks' future officially rests in the hands of Phil Jackson, who won two championships as a player with the team before winning 11 more titles as a coach.

Though Jackson may not be inheriting a championship contender, the current Knicks certainly are making a solid first impression.

New York seeks a seventh straight victory Wednesday night as it hosts the Indiana Pacers, who haven't been playing their best despite a four-game winning streak.

Jackson was introduced Tuesday as team president, and he's tasked with helping guide the Knicks to their first NBA title since the Hall of Fame coach was a reserve on their last championship team in 1973.

Changes certainly are on the way for New York (27-40), which trails Atlanta for the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference after it won 54 games last season.

Despite rumors surrounding the future of coach Mike Woodson and the pending free agency of Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks have remained focused on the court. They've won six straight by double digits for the first time since November 1969 after beating Milwaukee 115-94 on Saturday.

"I think our focus is solely on what we have to accomplish to make the playoffs, to be honest," said center Tyson Chandler, who was back in the starting lineup after missing two games due to family reasons. "I know it's a lot going on, but as an athlete, you don't pay too much attention to it, because it's out of your control anyway."

Though the Knicks face an uphill battle to make the postseason, they insist they're not counting this as a lost season quite yet.

"The easiest thing to do is to start talking about next year at this point in time right now, but the guys on the team seem pretty confident about just staying focused and trying to make this push for the playoffs," Anthony said. "We've got to really focus in on what's the task at hand."

The reward for making the postseason could be a first-round matchup with Indiana, which holds a relatively comfortable edge on Miami for the top seed in the East.

The Pacers (50-17) won the first two meetings with the Knicks this season. Paul George hit three free throws to send the game into overtime and finished with 35 points in Indiana's 106-96 victory Nov. 20, overcoming Anthony's 30 points and 18 boards.

After easily beating Boston last Tuesday, the Pacers defeated the 76ers by seven points three days later before having to overcome a 25-point deficit to knock off Detroit in overtime Saturday.

"We've got to get motivated," George said. "All these games are huge for us because every game counts."

Stephenson continues to show promise while averaging 14.1 points on the season, but he has 18 turnovers over his last five.

"I'm just being aggressive, taking the open shots," said Stephenson, who had five giveaways Monday. "I had a good field-goal percentage, but I forced a lot of turnovers that I had. I got to take care of the ball better."

The Pacers, winners of four of five regular-season meetings with the Knicks, would need to win 12 of their final 15 to set a team record for victories in a season.

Copyright 2014 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited

Knicks open Jackson era with seventh straight win

By BRIAN MAHONEYPosted Mar 20 2014 12:26AM

NEW YORK (AP) Long after Phil Jackson acknowledged the cheering fans with a thumbs-up and then a wave, there was one more standing ovation inside Madison Square Garden.

This one went to the Knicks, a far cry from the way they were treated at home earlier this season.

Carmelo Anthony scored 34 points and New York opened the Jackson era by beating the Indiana Pacers 92-86 Wednesday night for its season-high seventh straight victory.

With their new team president watching from a midcourt seat, the Knicks dominated the first half, then pulled away after the Eastern Conference leaders finally got untracked in the second.

"With a guy like that around it creates a winning mentality, it creates an atmosphere that's pretty golden and we've got to capitalize on that," Knicks forward Amare Stoudemire said.

Fans stood for Jackson in the first quarter and were on their feet again in the final minute to watch the Knicks beat the team that knocked them out of the playoffs last year.

"There's energy in the city. Bringing Phil back is huge for this franchise I think," coach Mike Woodson said. "But I've got to give a lot of credit to those guys in the locker room too, because again, we're battling. We've dug a hole and we're trying to dig our way out of the hole."

Lance Stephenson had 21 points and nine rebounds for the Pacers, who had their four-game winning streak snapped and failed to extend their three-game lead over the Miami Heat, who lost to Boston earlier Wednesday. Roy Hibbert scored 20 on 8-of-10 shooting, but All-Star Paul George missed all six first-quarter shots and finished 4 for 17 for his 17 points.

"We haven't grown our IQ as a team into improvising when teams try to throw little wrenches into our offense and that's where we've got to grow offensively," George said.

New York's previous six wins had all come against non-playoff teams, but this was against a team that seemingly had returned to form after dropping a season-worst four in a row.

"The teams that we play, we feel like they're in our way. That's our motto right now. They're in our way and we don't want to let nothing stop that," Anthony said.

Stoudemire added 21 points and Tyson Chandler grabbed 14 rebounds for the Knicks, just 16-20 at home and four games behind Atlanta for the final East playoff spot.

Jackson met with coaches and players earlier Wednesday, then watched the game from a seat above center court, receiving loud applause when he was shown on the overhead screen during a first-quarter timeout.

The 11-time champion as a coach also was on the Knicks' only two title-winning teams as a player, and there was a different energy in the building during what's been a hugely disappointing season until recent days.

Woodson said before the game he wasn't angry that Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan had originally talked to Jackson in December about the coaching job, adding that "the city should be buzzing" over his return. (Not all of it is; a group of fans frustrated with Dolan's leadership of the franchise went through with a previously planned protest outside the arena before the game).

Hibbert scored 14 points in the third quarter to help Indiana wipe out nearly all of a 16-point deficit, and it was just a one-point game early in the fourth when George made just his second field goal. But the Knicks answered with eight in a row, going ahead 75-66 on Stoudemire's basket with 7:57 remaining, and Anthony spun for a dunk and knocked down a jumper for consecutive scores after Indiana trimmed it to five with under 4 minutes to go.

"In the first half we tried to do it ourselves and only had two assists," Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. "In the second half we played much better. Shared the basketball better, we screened better, but we fell short."

Woodson improved to 45-16 in March and April as Knicks coach, but New York faces an uphill climb to dig out of the hole a 2-11 February created.

New York ran off 12 in a row to open its biggest lead at 39-23 on Stoudemire's basket midway through the second quarter, and the Pacers could only trim that to 47-35 at halftime

NOTES: Andrew Bynum will be out the rest of the week resting his sore right knee. The center aggravated his troublesome knee after playing Saturday against Detroit, his second appearance since signing with the Pacers. He has averaged 11.5 points and 9.5 rebounds thus far. ... Indiana won both earlier meetings and was trying to sweep the series for the first time since 2007-08.

Copyright 2014 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited

Notebook: Knicks 92, Pacers 86

THE FACT: Before Wednesday evening's game, the Knicks hadn't played a team with a winning record since they lost at the Chicago Bulls on March 2, a string of seven games.

THE LEAD: Carmelo Anthony scored a game-high 34 points, Amar'e Stoudemire added 21 and the New York Knicks avoided a season sweep at the hands of the Indiana Pacers thanks to a 92-86 victory at Madison Square Garden Wednesday.

The win extended the Knicks' (28-40) season-best winning streak to seven games and moved them to within four games of the eighth and final Eastern Conference playoff spot with 14 games to play. Pacers' (50-18) guard Lance Stephenson finished with a team-high 21 points to lead three players in double-figures. The Knicks held Paul George to just 4-for-17 shooting as he finished with 17 points.

QUOTABLE: "This says that we're really coming together. At this point, we're trying to do whatever it takes to make this playoff run."-- New York's Tyson Chandler

QUOTABLE II: "I think the perimeter guys did an excellent job. [Iman] Shumpert, 'Melo -- all the guys did an excellent job of getting into him and taking away his first option."-- Chandler on the defensive effort against Paul George

THE STAT: The Knicks are now 7-33 when getting outshot by an opponent and 14-39 when shooting below 50 percent from the field.

TURNING POINT: Leading 27-23 early in the second quarter, a 12-0 run spanning 2:04 gave the Knicks the lead for good. Stoudemire and Raymond Felton combined for nine of the 12 points as a driving layup from Stoudemire gave the Knicks their biggest lead of the game at 39-23 with 6:11 to go before halftime.

HOT: In his eighth start of the season, Stoudemire continued his solid offensive production this season. His 21 points came on 8-for-15 shooting from the field and 5-for-6 shooting from the foul line. The 21 points marked the third time he has gone for at least that many this month. Stoudemire came into the game averaging 17.0 points on 61.3 percent shooting from the field and 6.4 rebounds during the month of March.

NOT: In what has largely been a lost season for Shumpert, Wednesday's outing was merely the norm. The third-year guard took a hard elbow to the nose near the end of the first half, then finished with three points on 1-for-5 shooting in 28 minutes. He came into the game averaging just 7.4 points in 27.4 minutes over his last five contests.

NOTABLE: Midway through the first quarter, new Knicks President of Basketball Operations Phil Jackson was given a standing ovation as he was shown on the scoreboard. Jackson, who played for the Knicks from 1967-78 before winning 11 NBA championships as coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, was officially introduced by the Knicks on Tuesday morning.